This invention relates to systems and methods for providing a fantasy sports contest application, and more particularly, this invention relates to systems and methods for providing advertisements in a fantasy sports contest application.
Athletic endeavors have long supported a broad range of secondary competitions which include wagering on the outcome of particular games and wagering on the performance of a particular player.
In known fantasy sports contests, the user selects a roster, a team, a particular individual, or a group of individuals in an athletic contest. The user of a fantasy sports contest system is given the ability to take on the role of a fictional general manager with powers which may include the ability to draft, trade, dismiss and otherwise manage the player or players on the user's fantasy sports team.
Conventionally, the rules in a fantasy sports contest are set by a fantasy sports contest system provider, or are set by a league commissioner who sets the rules under which a group of fantasy or rotisserie sports game users competes against each other. For example, for every goal scored in real-life by a member of the user's fantasy soccer team, a conventional fantasy sports contest system might award five points to the user in the fantasy competition.
A provider of a conventional fantasy sports contest system may also provide additional services, which include providing statistical information on real-life games and players, tracking users' scores in the fantasy contest, and enabling transactions and other interactions among the users.
A fantasy sports contest may be based on a variety of real-life athletic events, and typically involves participants selecting players from real-life team sports (e.g., football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer or rugby), selecting players from real-life sports where individuals compete (e.g., golf, tennis or automotive racing), or selecting competitors from competitions involving animals (e.g., horse and dog racing). The user's selections are typically stored in the user's fantasy sports contest roster. The performance of these selections in real-life competition determines the user's performance in the fantasy sports competition.
One of the benefits of fantasy sports contests is that they provide a potentially lucrative venue for advertising, especially when implemented using an interactive application to provide the ability to be part of a fantasy sports contest via a distal medium. Presently, interactive applications accessible via the Internet using the World Wide Web are used to implement fantasy sports contests and may display advertisements to the user along with the featured content. These advertisements can be interactive in nature, and can enable the user to obtain further information on a product or service, or enable the user to purchase the product or service.
However, present fantasy sports contest applications do not take full advantage of the information provided by the user in the process of participating in the fantasy sports contest to target advertisements toward particular users or user groups, nor do they incorporate advertisements into the fantasy sports contest to attract user attention to displayed advertisements. Further, present fantasy sports contest applications do not utilize television sports broadcasts associated with the fantasy sports contest to increase user interest in advertisements. It would therefore be desirable to provide improved ways in which to present advertisements in conjunction with a fantasy sports contest.